Collaboration across Continents: Meet the CareerHub Team

By Tim Fahrendorff, updated on March 1st, 2017Length: 4 Minutes

In January 2017, the CareerFoundry placement team joined forces with UX design and web development students, graduates, and an enthusiastic Mentor and Tutor pair to design and build a jobs board exclusively for CareerFoundry students.

This platform will enable students and graduates to easily search and filter jobs in tech. These are specially curated to match the skills developed throughout the course.

To learn more about this exciting project, we interviewed Danielle, a Senior UX Design Mentor based in Germany, and Maysoon, a UX Design Tutor and UX Design Course graduate based in Jordan. Here are their thoughts on the project, their roles, global collaboration, and the challenges involved.

Can you tell us a bit about what the CareerHub project entails?

Danielle: The CareerHub is a dedicated job board for CareerFoundry students. It was designed and developed by CareerFoundry students, interns, mentors, tutors and core team members in an iterative and rapid approach.

Maysoon: CareerHub is an extended module in CareerFoundry that allows the students to find all job posts related to their course in one place, know more about what skills are required most, and then apply.

What is your role as Mentor or Tutor in this project?

Danielle: As a mentor, I’m providing feedback and advice. I can help guide the team if they have any open questions and help to keep things moving efficiently.

Maysoon: As a tutor in this project, I watch out for the students currently working on the project; I would be like a reference they go to when they are lost, as well as suggest things they can to do to enhance the result, or avoid mistakes.

Danielle: There are two major things of value. CareerFoundry students will get exclusive information on open design and web development positions and help them build their careers. For our team, we get to apply our knowledge and expertise in a network that is dear to our hearts. For the graduates working on the project, it is something that they can add to their portfolio and demonstrate hands-on skills. It also provides the entire team with an opportunity to refine our skills.

Maysoon: Having a centralized hub for jobs will ease the process of matching students/graduates with companies. The Career Services team will have one simplified place to share good-fit jobs, and students will have an up-to-date job board where they can find their next job.

What do you enjoy most about working on collaborative projects?

Danielle: The process is always the most fun, because of the range of emotions that designing, validating, and iterating takes you through. It will also be rewarding to see our students land their first design jobs thanks in part to CareerHub.

Maysoon: Collaborating with students, seniors, CareerFoundry staff! I consider this a wonderful opportunity.

What did you expect to find most challenging?

Danielle: We have quite a tight timeline, so I think that one of the most challenging aspects is being able to ship something that isn’t quite perfect.

Maysoon: I agree with Danielle. One challenge I have faced before, when working in-house, is sticking to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) we agreed on. I think this issue happens everywhere - if the project was a baby, the client would want their baby to start walking right away after being delivered.

How do you think you might help the team face these challenges?

Danielle: Hopefully, I can help by reminding our team that there is no such thing as perfect and that sometimes starting with a few different hypotheses and allowing our users to decide is the best way forward. I also hope to help the team see just what is achievable in a short timeframe.

Maysoon: I feel like I would help remind everyone that saying ‘no’ is sometimes better than simply implementing every idea that comes to mind and getting overwhelmed. Saying ‘no’ can be hard sometimes, but when you justify it with the right language and reasonable answers, you will get there.

What role should UX play in this (and future) student projects?

Danielle: UX should play a leading role. Especially with a product for UX students. It is a great opportunity to apply our knowledge and have it tested on an audience who knows about good UX.

Maysoon: Main role - we are UXers for a reason; bring the best to people!

How does the collaboration with CareerFoundry work?

Danielle: We have an internal Slack channel for collaboration and we set up two calls per week so that we are on the same page.

Maysoon: Yes, it’s awesome - well-scheduled, great collaboration and communication, and high spirits! We have one place where we set our tasks and timeline, expected deliverables, etc. We use Trello for that. We have weekly meetings to set expected deliverables, and discuss what have we done so far, keeping everyone on the same page. Appear.in helps us to do that across multiple location. And, of course we communicate via Slack and Skype every day to discuss any question that may arise.

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Tim Fahrendorff

Contributer to the CareerFoundry Blog

Tim Fahrendorff has been working in the tech employment industry for around 5 years. He joined CareerFoundry as the 7th employee, back in January 2015. Right now, he works with the CareerFoundry Career Services Team, developing partnerships and finding innovative ways to support our students in finding their dream job. He is passionate about all things related work 4.0. Currently researching how to implement UX practices into organizational development.